The Vanishing Shrewd Democrat

For most of my life I saw Democrats as more politically adept than their Republican opponents. I don't think LBJ was smarter than Barry Goldwater, but he was certainly more shrewd.

Of course I was generally uncomfortable with the win at all costs mentality that emphasized sentiment over reason and promoted a bias for simplicity. These were the actions of morally-compromised people and it is one of the reasons I was turned off by politics for so many years. If that is what is required to win, I wanted no part of it. None.

But in my disgust I begrudgingly respected the Dems for their amoral political instincts. The Dems were better at politics because it was second nature to them. They ran political machines and they were supported by (and they supported) powerful political families. The GOP had the Bushes and that's about it. The Dems had the Kennedys, the Daleys, the Browns, the Cuomos and on and on and on. They even got the Rockefellers to jump ship.

But somewhere along the way, the shrewd Dem fell by the wayside. They no longer heard or listened to the people. They could not be bothered by that vox populi nonsense. Now, they only listen to each other.

The shrewd Dem started to vanish as liberalism gave way to elitism. I still cringe when I hear radio hosts rail against liberalsim. Why not denounce the passenger pigeon? Political semantics is a subject I hope to address when I can once more blog daily.

The Dems just don't play the game very well anymore. Some pundits attribute this to the longstanding favoritism that the news media extended to them. When alternative media emerged, the pampered house pets had a hard time competing with those unkempt beasts emerging from the forest. The pet owners denounced the beasts and jumped into the fray. How dare they play rough up Fluffy.

No politcal candidate in US history has been coddled like Barack Obama. No one has ever been handed a Nobel Prize based on his or her potential. No one was ever awarded a Nobel Prize based on fifteen days in office. Fifteen days of photo ops and smiles. Arafat had to promote terrorism for decades to win his prize. Al Gore had to advance a calculated fraud and write a silly ass book and promote a horse shit movie and break his back on the arduous six-figure lecture circuit to win his prize. And Obama gets his after fifteen days in office. Where is the justice?

Conservatives love to point out that Reagan won without talk radio, Fox News and the Internet. Point taken. But in the old days the Dems did not have George Soros in their corner. In the words of Bernard Goldberg the media routinely "put their thumb on the scale" but there was no "Big Slobbering Love Affair" either. NPR, AP, NYT, the alphabet networks did not advocate for Jimmy Carter or Fritz Mondale or Michael Dukakis 24/7. They did not use non-news affiliates to derogate Republicans and conservatives. The press was brutal with Jimmy Carter and Chappaquiddick was not water under the bridge (forgive me) in 1980.

I maintain that the Dems lost their savvy because they are prissy elitists who always look over their shoulder for help from their priveleged sponsors. But the whys are not as important as the whats. Let's examine their flubs. Perhaps the greatest political blunder I have ever witnessed was the White House and Pelosi antagonizing the Tea Party. Bill Clinton would have hugged these wonderful Americans and had us believing he personally started the movement. Not so the current bunch of donkeys.

But Clinton fought his way to the top and he understood the little people in a way that the Obama wing never will. For all his many warts, Clinton was not overtly contemptuous of the American people. The same cannot be said of the guy who coined the phrase "bitter clinger."

From a political perspective, the Tea Party should have been co-opted. Instead, it was ridiculed. Dohhh. Then there was Obamacare. I have never seen a greater display of arrogance in my life and I hope I never again see anything like it. Legitimate concerns were met with a picket line of middle fingers. A smart politician would have at least feigned listening. They would have extracted the unpopular elements from the bill and left the popular items intact. As we know, that is not what happened.

Then came the shellacking and Obama went to Hawaii to reflect. Supposably he reinvented himself. Then he submitted the porkiest, fattest, most reckless, most irresponsible budget ever proposed. His poll numbers had recovered but they slid back to baseline after his budget was submitted.

Was Obama a slow learner or was he just contemptuous of average Americans? Either way, he and his braintrust did not exhibit the shrewdness and flexibility we had come to expect from his party. And it wasn't just Obama who had a case of the stupids. Over the past two months the Democrats have lead acts of political theater in just about every state house that just will not resonate with most voters.

I will credit the Dems with one clever tactic. They dispensed with the factory-made signs. They got the union peons to make homemade signs. Not as many seas of purple this time around. Brilliant.

But the Dems miscalculated once more. This was going to be the tinder that lit the mighty Donkey conflagration. I don't see it working out that way. For one thing, after a few days the prominent spokesmen were union officials and hacks. Signs reading "Blame Wall Street" were held in front of cameras. How long could Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson avoid the spotlight? Not very long as it turned out.

Of course the most obvious gaffe was the old hidden senator trick. When the going gets tough, the tough run to Illinois (Indiana Democrats would follow suit lead by the Wisconsin senators but with less publicity.) This maneuver does not win the hearts and minds of any but the journalistic class. Someone, somewhere, should be required to wear a dunce cap for a long time to come.

Getting past the stupid tactics, we arrive at a stupid strategy. Does anyone with a brain cell think state teachers are on average, underpaid? Most teachers work 180-185 days/year and some have generous benefit time to reduce their work year even further. Most eachers can retire after thirty years with a pension. In short, they have it made.

But our public schools are a disaster and everyone knows it. There is plenty of blame to go around but the fact is, higher salaries have not produced higher test scores. For a multitude of reasons, teachers just don't make very good poster children for the cause of worker empowerment.

We are witnessing the reign of the stupidest batch of Democrats we have ever seen. Obama/Reid/Pelosi lead their party over a cliff in 2010. As bad as the shellacking happened to be, it could have been much worse. 2012 is breathing down their necks and it remains to be seen if the Democrats will find a general to lead them.

I for one, do not see a leader emrging.